I'm still not sure how I feel about this book. On the one hand, it is a beautifully written, moving (if depressing) and thorough account of three generations surviving in the face of death, infidelity and alienation. On the other hand, after 300 pages, a reader gets bored of every female character getting pregnant, running away from home and/or marrying an emotionally distance if not frankly abusive husband and regretting her life. It ends up feeling flat at best and at worst, a little misogynistic that even the smartest female characters get entangled in such things.

On a practical level, the intertwined narratives of many generations playing through the same script are very hard to keep straight, and I ended up needing a diagram to remember if Frank was Nell's husband or Alice's and how exactly Edmund was related to Bunty and who exactly Betty was, again? I get the parallels Atkinson is trying to draw, but they work better when she gives the characters enough individuality that the reader can keep them straight.

The true redeeming aspect of the novel is Ruby -- the protagonist. Her thoughts are vivid, full of metaphor and symbolism and yet relatable. The book truly shines in Ruby's nightmares -- inchoate end of the world fantasies, in which the familiar twists with a certainty of catastrophe -- and the way in which they mature with Ruby. These nightmares reflect the heart of Atkinson's narrative -- the way in which the families are both familiar and yet ill-meaning, self-involved and chaotic, which she does equally skillfully. ( )

Darky humourous look at four generations of late 19C - mid 20C Yorkshire women with decidedly mixed feelings (honest ones) about their children; epiphanies re 'leading the wrong life' resonate throughout. Better 2nd time around when one can concentrate on the story, words and imagery rather than only plot. ( )

Re-reading old favorites, and this one blew me away all over again. ( )

Set mostly in York, England, this is a multigenerational family saga in which protagonist Ruby Lennox narrates the story of her life from conception in 1951 into adulthood. She of her distant mother, two siblings, grandmother, and great grandmother. Ruby inserts what she calls “footnotes” to provide the necessary background and historic context. It is character-driven. It covers family secrets and tragedies. The writing is solid. My main issue with it is that it is not particularly engaging. I was not enthralled with the idea of a narrator that was self-aware at conception, especially in a book that is realistic in all other ways. It really drags in places, and I was tempted to set it aside. I liked it but didn’t love it. ( )

Rubí Lennox fue concebida por Bunty a regañadientes y nació mientras su padre, George, estaba en el Dog and Hare, en Doncaster, diciéndole a una mujer, vestida de verde esmeralda, que no estaba casado. Bunty nunca quiso casarse con George, pero era la único que quedaba. En realidad, quería ser Vivien Leigh o Celia Johnson, deseaba que un héroe romántico la secuestrase y se la llevase a América. Pero ahí estaba, varada en un piso sobre la tienda de animales en una antigua calle junto a la catedral de York, con la sensata e irónica Patricia, de cinco años, la glotona y revoltosa Gillian, que se negaba a ser ignorada. Rubí cuenta la historia de su familia desde el día, a finales de siglo XIX, en que un fotógrafo ambulante francés captura a la frági y hermosa Alice y a sus hijos, como flores en ámbar, hasta los sobrecogedores, divertidos y memorables acontecimientos en la vida de la propia Rubí.